Plasma Calibration Without Spending A Single Dime

Ok, you've gone out and bought a brand spanking new plasma TV, but how do you make sure that you're getting the best picture out of it? To do that you need to adjust the picture settings on your plasma TV, .otherwise known as "plasma calibration" in the AV industry.

Plasma Calibration Without Spending A Single Dime

Plasma Calibration Without Spending A Single Dime

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Plasma Calibration Without Spending A Single Dime

Plasma Calibration Without Spending A Single Dime

Before you start, you should know that the best calibration for your plasma TV will depend on your source material (i.e. what you're Watching), your input device (e.g. DVD player or satellite box) and the amount of ambient light in your home environMent ... among other things. You should also be aware that your plasma TV needs to be run for at least 200 hours to allow the phosphors to establish, or else you will have to repeat your plasma TV calibration in the future.

You may not own a plasma TVcalibration DVD, so this article will try to walk you through the steps using readily available material. Remember to use the best available connection to connect your input device to your plasma TV. In descending order, the cleanest signal (and hence best picture quality) can be obtained via: HDMI DVI VGA = > = > component SCART (RGB) > S-Video > Composite.

1. Adjust Brightness. This actually determines the black level on your plasma TV: too high a setting and black will look gray; too low and dark grays are swallowed into blackness. To set brightness to its proper level, simply play DVD with lots of black scenes (e.g. opening scene from Star Wars). Now crank your brightness up until the black on your plasma TV, then slowly look gray dial your brightness downuntil the black in the movie JUST matches the black on the black bars on top and bottom of the movie.

2. Adjust Contrast. This determines the white level and is responsible for how much light your plasma TV actually emits. To set contrast correctly, play DVD scenes containing a shiny bald head/forehead (e.g. The Fifth EleMent). Now increase contrast until the bald patch is glaringly hurting your eyes, and then tone it down until you're satisfied that you can see all the detail within the white.

3. Adjust Sharpness. For most poorly-encoded source material you want to use this to enhance the edges, but if done excessively this will introduce haloing and ringing around edges. It's best to bring up a "User Menu" (from your satellite box, DVD, etc) to adjustsharpness: increase it until lots of ringing artifacts occur around the edges of the words, then decrease it until the ringing just disappears.

4. Adjust Color. Color can either be too saturated or too dull ... either way the picture will not look right, with the most noticeable errors found in skin tones and green foliage. As a rough guide, you can use a DVD scenes with a hand and tinker with the color until the color matches that of your own hand.

Plasma Calibration Without Spending A Single Dime